LEGACY MOTOR CLUB Cuts 3D Printing Costs 97% With BigRep — NASCAR Team Now Prints End-Use Parts In-House

From $2,000 to $56: The 3D Printing Revolution in NASCAR

In the high-stakes world of NASCAR, where championships are won in the margins of milliseconds, the speed to track is as critical as the speed on it. LEGACY MOTOR CLUB, the team co-owned by legends Jimmie Johnson and Richard Petty, has been integrating industrial 3D printing into the heart of their race shop with impressive results.

By partnering with BigRep and deploying two STUDIO systems, LEGACY MOTOR CLUB has transitioned from a reliance on external vendors to a high-cadence, in-house production model. This helps the team go from having raw components to a complete car in roughly four weeks.

Breaking the Outsourcing Cycle

Before adopting large-format additive manufacturing, LEGACY MOTOR CLUB faced long lead times. Prototyping a single aerodynamic component or specialized fixture often meant waiting two to three weeks for an external supplier.

In an interview with BigRep, Steven Sander, the Director of Aerodynamics at LEGACY MOTOR CLUB, said: Our cars are rebuilt weekly, and the performance margins are extremely small, so we need to prototype, iterate, and produce parts very quickly. That is where having in-house additive manufacturing becomes a real advantage.

The club runs two BigRep STUDIO printers almost 24/7, producing fixtures and templates, as well as functional parts that go into the car.

Real Parts, Real Racing

LEGACY MOTOR CLUB utilizes engineering-grade filaments to produce end-use parts that survive the brutal environment of the Cup Series. One standout application is the gear-cooler plenum, a complex duct used to manage temperatures.

Previously, sourcing this part externally cost roughly $2,000 per unit. By printing in-house with high-temperature materials, LEGACY MOTOR CLUB reduced the material cost to approximately $56 per unit.

In motorsports, saving weight usually costs money, Sanders added. Here, we are saving weight and saving money at the same time. That is rare.

The weight saving comes from having greater control over materials, wall thickness, orientation, and infill.

What They Print

The team prints nose ducts for the front brakes, which are basically one-time-use parts and not practical to make in carbon. They also print a large gear cooler plenum at the rear of the car.

That component is far too big for a hobby printer, so we need an industrial, large-format system with accurate dimensional control and a big build volume, explained Sanders.

The BigRep Partnership

With engineering support from BigRep, LEGACY MOTOR CLUB was able to send designs over, get slicing feedback, figure out which materials to use, and how to optimize the print. That collaborative process is how we took the same gear cooler plenum from an expensive external purchase to an in-house production win.

LEGACY MOTOR CLUB competes under the Toyota Racing banner with three Toyota Camry XSE race cars built for the NASCAR Cup Series: the No. 43 driven by Erik Jones, the No. 42 piloted by John Hunter Nemechek, and the No. 84, raced part-time by Jimmie Johnson.